Can you Microwave Frozen Roast Potatoes?

If you want to make roast potatoes without the fuss and without the wait, or even if your oven’s broken and you’ve got some roasties to cook, you might wonder if you can microwave those frozen roast potatoes lurking in your freezer!

The good news is, you can.  I microwave roast potatoes when I put together a quick Sunday lunch for myself.

Frozen roast potatoes are made by part-roasting the potatoes, in oil, then freezing them before they’ve finished.  The pack instructions will tell you to put them into the oven for 30-40 minutes or so.  But, you have a choice.  You can microwave the roast potatoes in order to reduce that oven cooking time, or, if you’re prepared to accept a lack of colour, you can microwave them entirely.  It all depends on your situation and what you’re willing to do.

The bottom line is that you can microwave them – and they are edible.  What you lose is colour and crunch – a small price to pay if it’s that or nothing!

Aldi Roast Potatoes, Seasoned and Coated are the brand I most often use these days, I’ve not made a huge study of frozen roast potatoes, these are simply an easy bag for me to grab when out shopping.  Others will work similarly.

How to Microwave Frozen Roast Potatoes:

• Pour out the potatoes you want to cook – they’re best done in a single layer.
• Microwave on full power (800 watts) a minute at a time, shaking them after each minute.
• Microwave the potatoes, in total, for about 10 minutes.

While you’re doing this there’ll be a lot of steam – you might choose to put a lid on your dish, to stop that steam escaping, it’s a personal preference.

If you want the roast potatoes to have more colour, you can always “paint” them with a little gravy before microwaving them.

What you’ll get is hot, cooked, roast potatoes, without the colour/crispy crunch.  You have to choose whether having them like this is better than having none at all.  Cooked in a microwave will never produce the same results as oven roasted potatoes, but the point here is that you can microwave them, if you HAVE to.

Experiment: 

If you start doing this regularly, then you can experiment with colouring them, covering them with a lid, how long you cook them for – all to get closest to your preference.

The photo at the top of this page shows some potatoes I microwaved for five minutes before finishing them off in my toaster oven.  They do change colour, slightly, to a darker brown from when you start microwaving them to when you finish, but not much

Christmas Dinner

I will be using the microwave, then toaster oven, method to cook my potatoes on Christmas Day this year.  I like roast potatoes, but I am no perfectionist – I’m happy that I’ve got a few on the plate.  Actually, the way I cook them is better than a lot of home cooks I’ve been fed by!  Try them, see what you think…. if it’s the choice between a long cooking time, or no spuds, it’s worth a go.  At least they’re roast potatoes – and once they’re covered in gravy they’re “all the same” aren’t they 🙂

5 Minutes Microwave, 15 Minutes in the Toaster Oven:

If you use the microwave just to speed up the cooking time, then with just 5 minutes in the microwave and 15 minutes on the bottom shelf of a toaster oven, they look like this photo:

If you like them more “well done” it’d just be a case of cooking them a little longer or raising the shelf to the top.  This method of microwaving before putting them in the oven will shave about 10 minutes off the cooking time.